The struggle for America's soul
By Henry Lamb
web posted May 12, 2003
Tom Daschle's disarming demeanor in front of a TV camera
presents the image of a patriot, struggling to save America from
the clutches of right-wing ideologues hell-bent on overtaking the
judiciary - and the nation. He has no problem distorting the clear
instruction of the Constitution by refusing to allow an up-or-
down vote on the President's nominations for the federal
judiciary.
The ongoing battle over judicial appointments is the most visible
element of the much deeper and broader struggle for the very
soul of America.
Tom Daschle represents a segment of the population that has a
vision of America's future that is dramatically different from the
vision advanced by the Bush administration. Daschle – the
temporary leader of the deposed Democratic Party – is
struggling mightily to regain the dominance enjoyed during the
Clinton/Gore era. Bush – the temporary leader of the now-
dominant Republican Party – is struggling just as hard to retain
his party's dominance, at least through another four-year term.
America's future is bigger, and more important, than any
individual. But it is through individuals, and their political parties,
that the very soul of our nation is revealed.
There is no doubt that our nation was founded upon the
principles of freedom, set forth in our founding documents. There
is no doubt that for the first century, those principles guided our
nation's policies. There is no doubt that during the 20th century,
those principles became fuzzy, and began to erode, as new
principles of self-governance emerged.
The struggle for America's soul is not simply between the
Democrats and Republicans. It goes much deeper. At the very
core of the conflict, the struggle is between capitalism and
collectivism. There are endless shades of variation between these
two extremes, but at the core, the conflict is between capitalism
and collectivism.
It is a short distance between speeches delivered by Tom
Daschle, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and some of the
Democratic presidential candidates, to the policies advanced by
the Progressive
Caucus, or the
Democratic Socialists of America, or, for that matter, the World Socialist Web
Site, or the
International Socialist Organization. All these policies are
consolidated in
Agenda 21, and in the Commission on Global Government's
report,
Our Global Neighborhood.
Democrats do not call themselves socialists, and, indeed, some
are not. Even a casual reading, however, of the policies and
proposals advanced by the socialists of the world, reveals that
the policies advanced by the Democrats are hand-in-glove with
the socialists. Consider Hillary's universal health care fiasco,
Kennedy's cradle-to-grave, state-run education proposals,
Gephardt's government-mandated health-care-for-tax-break
proposal, and all the government-controlled land use policies.
The more one reads the global socialist agenda, the easier it is to
see how completely this philosophy has permeated the
Democratic Party in the United States.
Many people who feel pangs of social responsibility, or a
genuine desire to "protect" the environment, tend to identify with
the rhetoric of the Democratic Party, without really considering
all the consequences that accompany government control. When
government does control completely – which is the goal of
socialism – it's too late for people to change their minds.
Were it not for the wisdom of our founders, who fashioned the
electoral college, Bush would not be in the White House. Hillary
Clinton was one of the first to call for the abolition of the
electoral college, which would transform America into a
democracy, instead of the republic which our founders
constructed.
Socialists love to use the word "democracy" to describe their
system of governance, because it suggests that the people have a
say in policy development. Truth is, however, that in a socialist
democracy, the only people who have a say in policy
development are those people that the socialist leaders choose to
have a say.
So it is with the "collaborative decision process," instituted by
Clinton's President's Council on Sustainable Development, and
still used throughout government agencies to "build consensus"
among pre-selected people to endorse pre-determined policy
goals.
Americans who don't want this nation to fall victim to socialist
policies and procedures, are typically referred to as right-wing
extremists, greedy capitalists, anti-environmental polluters, and
most recently, as war-mongers. These are the people who are
constantly the targets of the Democrats' verbal assaults. These
are the folks who rejected Al Gore, and unseated Dick
Gephardt and Tom Daschle from their Congressional majority
leadership positions.
Americans who don't want this nation to fall victim to socialist
policies and procedures are rising, organizing, strategizing, and
mobilizing to win the struggle for America's soul.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental
Conservation Organization, and chairman of Sovereignty
International.
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